Using an electric motor to drive the alternator can be done, but both the motor and alternator wastes some energy as heat, so you get less power and energy out than you put in. Result, reduced range. This was an old-fashioned way to convert DC to AC, the "rotary inverter" replaced nowdays by far more efficient electronic inverters.

Connecting the alternator to the wheels would cause drag and slow the car down. That's how regenerative braking works! But trying to constantly recharge by this method would be like driving with the brakes on - it wouldn't work and would decrease your driving range! Electric cars already can use their motors as an alternator for regenerative braking.

By placing a generator (alternator) attached to the wheels you are using the batteries to re charge the batteries. In any system there is a percentage of waste from friction and heat (from the friction or resistance in the batteries and wires) the only time the generator on the wheels is a good idea is to stop the car. This is called re-generative breaking and is used on most of the hybrid cars on the market.

I drove across a valley in California where the temperature was 110 degrees. I drove through New Hampshire when the temperature was twenty below zero. We don't just need locomotion. We need to heat and cool our vehicles. So what would be the reasonable driving range expectation for an electric powered car with the heater or air conditioner turned on?

Did anyone ever notice how many trucks are on the road? That becomes painfully obvious when you're toughing out one of those 15 mile long traffic jams that seem to be happening everywhere every day. Will we fix the problem by improving our cars if we ignore the trucks?

When I first started flying in the 60s, lights of cities an suburbs were clearly defined. Now the entire nation seems to be lighted. Even over the plains. If one thinks it's only a problem is only moving vehicles, then one doesn't understand the overall problem.

None of you are going to like this, but the only currently known solution to our overall energy predicament is generation of electricity by nuclear fission.

Speed, wind speed and direction, road slope, tire pressure, A/C, and other things can influence the driving range of an EV, just as there are a lot of things that influence the milage of an IC engine car.

To get a rough idea how much influence A/C and heating could have on EV range, let's take a theoretical example: An EV with a battery that can deliver 50 Kwh and can go 200 miles at 60 mph, with a A/C that draws 2 Kw when running. At 60 mph the drive motor consumes .25 Kwh each mile. For each hour the A/C runs it consumes 2 Kwh, the equvalent of 8 miles, but the A/C doesn't run constantly, it cools the car then shuts off and waits until the temperature gets too high before resuming.

Now assume we take off on a trip with a fully charged battery, traveling at 60 mph, and hot enough that the A/C is running half of the time. After 1 hour, we will have gone 60 miles but will have only 136 "miles" of range left (the A/C will have used 4 miles of range). After 2 hours we will have gone 120 miles and will have 72 miles of range left. After 3 hours, we will have gone 180 miles but have only 8 miles of range left, so we stop to recharge. The A/C will have used only 12 of the 192 "miles" of range, a little over 6%.

Better yet a convertable so you can put the top down. Breeze going by at 60 mph is usually quite sufficient to keep cool. Wearing a coat works wonders when it's too cold. If you can afford a car & gas, you should be able to afford a decent coat! Temperature issues shouldn't thwart anybody from electric cars. Worst problem I see with electric is that there aren't that many places available away from home to plug them into. Never an electrical outlet where you need one. Solar rechargers might solve that problem.

Your answers of wear a coat or roll down the windows are too simplistic. The humidity or temperature may be too high for comfort even at 60mph. One cannot converse easily or hear the radio with windows down at that speed. The road and wind noise at that speed can be hard on one's hearing. One can forget one's coat. One might need a warmer coat sitting in a car for an extended period than elsewhere.

The point is that the range expectations *must* be qualified by the drain of equipment like A/C, heating, window defrosting/defogging, wipers, running lights, headlights, instrument lights, stereos, etc.

Several cars I've had or ridden in didn't have functional AC or heat so I plan on dressing for the expected weather when leaving home. I'd rather save the conversation for when I'm not driving or riding in a car whenever possible. I can hear the radio with the top & windows down. The breeze blowing by is one reason I prefer driving over public transportation. I don't have to listen to anybody telling me to put the window back up because they're cold if I'm driving my car!

Of course one can survive without A/C or heat. However, now that we have those conveniences, we're hard pressed to give them up for most any reason. Without A/C, and I have been without it, I can wind up wet by the time I reach my destination. I and those around me prefer I use A/C in those conditions. Likewise, without heat, one can dress more warmly, but that also can interfere with safe driving.

Without heat and A/C, windshields can fog making driving unsafe or impossible. Heat alone is not as useful as having both in that regard.

One can weigh many factors, including convenience, preference, health, and safety and conclude that A/C and heat are necessary or not. One's conclusion is not necessarily that of another, so the range specifications must be qualified so consumers understand the ramifications.

One solution fitting all? If you live in the mountains, why build a nuclear power plant when there's plenty of 'falling' water? Or on the flats when there's plenty of wind? Carry a 20 lb container of propane and have an RV style heater installed and you're warm as toast. RV fridges run on propane also.Rail transport of goods can be electrically powered which can remove some of the road burden and fuel consumption. There are many alternatives...why limit yourself to one size fits all?

VOIP conference calls, videoconferencing, document sharing via Google/docs etc all avoid the need for energy intensive travel alltogether. Recent example, I retired and spend the winters in Florida. I "needed" to be in Washington for a professional association meeting. The weather turned extremely bad in Washington so we did 90% of what we needed to do by conference call instead of travel. We could reduce energy consumption by an amazing amount if everyone who could, worked from home one day per week or more.

Continued investment in collaboration technology, human resource culture changes to encourage working from remote locations and continued telecommunication bandwidth improvements would pay much greater benefits that the drop in the bucket available from some of the sources being suggested.

1. South American countries like Brazil have almost completely converted to Ethonal, To us this means that there are already conversion kits for U.S Fuel injected cars readily available. However, The EPA has not approved any kits to date. New legislation has given them the authority to use whatever means they can to lower green house emissions, it will be interesting to see what they do. 2. There is a company in Canada that has a concocted a mold substance that traces its roots back to WWII that will turn corn by products (i.e. stalks)and starch into a sugar type substance that will make the production of ethonal more economical with no ill effects to the food supply.3. you could flat out have and ethonal spill with no long term effects to the environment4. Auto's and the internal combustion engine were designed to run on Ethonal5. We would not be dependent on oil,there would be no more reasons for us to be at war for oil. The middle eastern terrorists would lose money from selling oil and would have the less capitol to work with to finance terrorist attacks.

The answer is simply conservation, which can yield far more than any of these pie-in-the-sky answers involving corn or french fry oil. Compared to many alternatives, gasoline has environmental advantages. Consider, for instance, the very large amount of fossil fuel it takes to make ethanol, to power things like farm tractors and distilleries - it's actually better to just burn the gas in the car. Electricity is simply a means of concentrating the pollution at the power plant, instead of spreading it out among millions of cars. So my favorite is to use gasoline, but to use MUCH less of it.

Buy a smaller car that gets better mileage on ordinary gasoline. Hybrids help in congested city traffic, but are worse on the open highway. Decide before you buy based on your driving habits.

Use public transit, and support funding its expansion at the ballot box.

I agree that conservation is a very good idea, and that is why I drive a hybrid. Unfortunately it is hard to persuade people of the benefits of hybrids when there are so many myths and outrageous lies about hybrids.

One myth is that "they don't do well on the open hiway", but I routinely get 45 to 50 mpg on long freeway runs. In fact, I get better milage on long freeway runs than when I make several very short local runs! I'm looking forward to the day I can do all my local driving on cheap clean efficient electricity.

It does no good to build public transit if people won't ride it, and the standard "bus & light rail" systems are just too slow and inconvenient for most people. What is needed is a public transit system that doesn't make people wait, is fast and convenient and economical, and runs 24 hours a day every day. That is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit

For decades, I've thought of PRT and its superiority. I didn't even know anyone had developed such systems until recently. While I still won't live in a city, I normally work in one, so I'd have to commute some distance via car. However, I'd be very likely to use PRT to travel the rest of the way. I refuse to use existing mass transit because it doesn't serve my needs and wants. I want transportation that is ready when I am, goes right where I want to go, and doesn't require me to sit with strangers of questionable morality or cleanliness.

The only downside to PRT for me is that if my entire (nuclear) family tried to use it, we'd need three cars!

There are over 240 patents in the US for carburetors that can get up to 250 miles per gallon. See any on the market yet? Got any idea who might oppose such innovation? Because they are the reasons you never will see one in your car.

Over thirty years ago Stan Meyer's developed and ran a dune buggy on water. He was offered billions to keep it off the market, when he refused to sell out he died of poisoning and all his work was stolen. He was by no means the only person to develop such technology.

Water is the future energy we all need, but no one wants us to have. How would our government fill the hole in the budget of the .50 per gallon in taxes they collect on gasoline? Check out www.waterpoweredcar.com and then tell me again how bio or battery is our future.

You can look up the details on any patent at a patent library, and if the patent has expired (they are good for 17 years) you are free to use them yourself. If you really think those supposed "100/200/250 mpg" carburetors work as claimed, go ahead and build one for yourself. As for me, I figure the professional auto engineers have already tested scores of them, and found them unworkable or impractical. After all, with huge sales increases possible for even minor milage improvements, a genuine working 100 mpg carburetor would be quickly marketed by any auto company, if it actually existed.

Checked out the site, as expected it has a huge collection of bizzare conspiracy theories and wild assertions, without a scrap of proof to be seen anywhere. Lots of misunderstandings, strange notions, half-truths, and outright lies.

Stan Meyers did die unexpectedly, but there is no indication of poisoning or any other foul play. People do sometimes die unexpectedly of natural causes. If the website promoters had any real evidence of foul play, why didn't they present it to the coroner? Well, you can't present what doesn't exist.

Stan Meyers "water car" ran on hidden fuel, and was part of a scam to sell $10 worth of plumbing parts for $1,500 a pop.

Electrolysis is simple and well known. There is plenty of free information about it readily available. If you really think you can run your car on a electrolysis cell that magically takes far less energy to run than the H2 produces, go ahead and try it, it's your time and money to waste.

But Don't expect me to waste my time and effort on a fools errand, and don't expect me to be gullible enough to fall for such a simple fraud.

While working at a Ford facility as a computer technician, I did have the opportunity to witness such fantastic fuel economy. A 351CID V-8 with a "specially" design air intake and fuel injection system was employed. The net MPG was slightly better than 249. The engineer explained: "The fuel is heated to vaporize it prior to injection into the cylinder. When compressed, it is much more volatile than normal fuel and produces more enery even though it is using less fuel. Many of the old carb patents mosved the fuel in such a way that it also became vaporized before intake. Ford bought several patents. I was capable of examining these patents. None were manufactured by Ford, but several prototypes were built and tested in their facilities.

Another factor that can improve mileage is simply creating more spark energy to ignite more fuel in the cylinder. Many aftermarket coils and plugs have been designed over the years that do offer slight improvements. I am waiting for some results from an associate that is using some new Bosch plugs. He hasn't reported back what if any improvments have been noted.

Back in the early 80's, I remember reading an article in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics about embedding electric transmition into the road bed. This transmitted electricity to the electric car by induction. This would remove the distance restrictrions casued by batteries. Toll roads could incorporate this technology and you pay for the electricity along with the upkeep of the road when you pay your toll. The batteries or other electric generating mechanism in your car would be used only for local travel. If you had enough available power, you could recharge your batteries as well as move the car while traveling on one of these roads so that when you arrived at your exit, you would have full driving range to get to your final destination.

The article mentioned above was not just theory but had been an actual test where they built a 1 mile section of road with this technology. I don't remember the efficiency of the electricity transfer via induction or even if they tested this. They certainly didn't have the variety of electric or hybrid cars then that is available today.

I'll leave the problem to someone else of metering the electricity use of each car and how to pay an appropriate price when the toll is paid.

I own a service company in Western Canada. We use propane in our truck as it is cheap $.50/litre($2.30/US gal.) versus $1.17/litre ($5.35/US gal.)for fuel right now. It is less poluting so we can run a truck inside a building. For delivery or working trucks it is the only affordable way to go.

My favorite alternative fuel would be ANYTHING that does NOT involve FOOD SOURCES or ANYTHING AGRICULTURAL.If you think there's a shortage of OIL or that we're going to run out of it eventually, you're right. But with development as rampant as it is in this country, agricultural lands are disappearing at ALARMING rates. We're not even going to be able to feed ourselves for long at current rates. We DO NOT NEED TO BE USING OUR FOOD SOURCES FOR FUEL!!!Even Fidel Castro has said this. Mind you, it might be the ONLY coherent thing he's said in his nearly 50 years in power, but on this, HE'S RIGHT!I personally expected much more from SOLAR energy exploration, but it appears as though it's too difficult to warrant any real exploration.Aj

How about compressed air? I hear there has been some development on engines and small cars that simply run on compressed air. Zero pollution. I'd be curious if anyone else has information on this technology's pros and cons.

electric seem like a viable source for power. what they need to figure out is how to make a generator built into the system to make it more self sufficient. tje old chevys had a generator system that created electricty to the point where once the car was stared you could take out the batery and the car made its own electricity. why can't they make a unit like that for the new electic cars that will constsntly recharge the onboard system.

There are plenty of new developed technologies out there and are being ignored by the real world. Our country especially ignores the technologies because of the control by oil companies.. Air and water are both tremendous resources for fuel. Air seems to be the best since it is widely available and easily used for small and large engine designs.

The stuff coming from the auto industries is truly shameful. We should be running cars now with more than 60+ MPG, easily. Just plain poor designs. Take a look at the alternative engine designs now available.

I'd use alcohol. It saves lives by being in your cars tank instead of your own while you drive, and an engine adapted to run on alcohol has the sweetest sound! (Makes Camry sounds like Trans-Am). What more do we need?

I've read many of the posts here, and some are pretty convincing- also some are pretty lame. I think that although there doesn't seem to be an efficient, economical, and permanent solution to all of the issues at this time, that doesn't mean that we can't come up with one (or several) in the future. Just because, for instance, neither biodeisel nor alcohol nor H2 can be made in sufficient quantities to become our ONE fuel source doesn't mean that we should scrap them all, use each of them where it makes sense. And the Inefficiencies of converting electricity or H2 back and forth or transporting them to where we need them shouldn't stop us from using sources that can be cheap and environmentally friendly. Also, whether global warming is real or not, the oil (and coal) WILL run out. We also need to think of the pollution that using them causes. And anyone who would argue that they don't pollute should stand about 20 miles outside of any major city for a day and watch the great brown clowd that forms from automobile and industrial use of fossil fuel. Even more efficient use of what we have would greatly improve our environment, we could live closer to our work, use less heat, air conditioning, and hot water and do some of our chores manually rather than using powered tools and vehicles for every task that we accomplish.

For heavier work I think Bio Diesel has excellent potential, including running your 6.0 Power stroke diesel off of french fry oil.

Every form of energy be it wind, solar, nuclear, biodiesel, ethanol, have drawbacks. The trick is to set up a balance between our need for energy and our ability to preserve and protect our envronment.

Hydroelectric has effects on fish spawning, Wind has effects on raptors and other birds, nuclear has excellent power generation properties but provide hazards we all know are going to be hard to live with. If we can make a magnetic accellerator as a launch platform we could probably get rid of spent fuel rods by flinging them into the sun, but besides that, there are very few places we can think of to safely store them.

Any combustion oriented generation is going to have an effect on a steadly warming planet, so the trick it to reduce the need to burn fossel fuels for everyday existance. I think the answer is "all of the above, in moderation.

We use aour push bikes (Aussie slang for one that is foot powered), and the fuel is a beer at the end of the ride. Distances that we used to commute were about 8 miles each way. Now retireed we use bike so our Prius hybrid is in use only twice a week.

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